


Lifesigns

by Dain



Series: Lifesigns [1]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Complicated Relationships, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I can't decide how to do the relationship tags but I think I might leave it at just Jean & Scott..., Identity Issues, Insecurity, Loss of Powers, Mild Gore, Mind Control, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Parenthood, Rescue, Reunions, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Trans Scott Summers, Trust Issues, X-Factor (1986), it's not stated explicitly so idk if I should tag for it but Scott and Jean are both autistic, like very mild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2020-10-28 10:19:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20776949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dain/pseuds/Dain
Summary: The Phoenix has come and gone, and Jean Grey has returned to find that she may no longer have a place in the world.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've finished writing and editing this fic, so all it needs is to be posted. I'm planning on a Wednesday/Saturday update schedule.
> 
> There's no one point of divergence from canon for this universe, but rather the initial difference is that more time passes between the shuttle crash in X-Men #101 and the Dark Phoenix Saga. The story begins during X-Factor #1 and is not 100% compliant with Fantastic Four #286.
> 
> And last but not least, a big thank you to raven-rothschild and brotherhoodofmutiny on Tumblr for beta reading!

Once the initial rush of excitement had worn off, joy had congealed into a thick tension that now filled every inch of the rental car. Jean couldn’t sit still, her leg bouncing and her fingers fidgeting with her pants, smoothing out wrinkles and scratching at the fabric. Warren was quiet, his hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, his gaze fixed on the road ahead. She thought she might choke on the silence.

She’d hated her telepathy when it had first emerged, hated the way her mind was all jumbled up with other people’s thoughts, hated her accidental invasions of others’ privacy, hated the echoes of Annie’s death, all twisted up in the foundations of who she was. But as the years passed she’d learned to keep her mind to herself and to let the thoughts and feelings of the people around her fade into white noise. Now all of that was gone, and in the emptiness of her own mind she felt utterly disconnected from the people around her. Maybe everything was fine after all. Maybe Warren didn’t feel that oppressive stillness clinging to his skin the way she did. She had no way of knowing.

How could anyone stand to be so alone?

Finally she could take it no longer and broke the silence. “Where are we going?” she asked, trying to sound relaxed and unaffected. “Back to your place?” She purposefully didn’t look over at Warren.

“Nah,” he said. “Someone’d probably notice. I called ahead for a hotel room, something more private.”

Was a hotel room really more private than his apartment? “Are you worried about something?”

When he didn’t respond immediately she risked a peek out of the corner of her eye and caught him shrugging. She bit back a sigh. He didn’t want to talk, but why? Was he nervous? Tired? Upset?

She turned away to look out of the window instead. Maybe if she couldn’t see him, the echoing silence would be less jarring. The city outside her window looked more or less the same, although the people they passed might as well have been animated paper cutouts, moving here and there without any guiding reason or purpose. She let her eyes go out of focus and the city became a blurry mass of color, leaving her with no way to distinguish between people and buildings and cars. At least she knew that the Fantastic Four were still in business, the Avengers, the X-Men…not everything had changed. She could still recognize the landscape.

“Here we are,” Warren said after another ten minutes or so. Jean peered out of the windshield at the hotel. Something fancy, of course, but it was probably lowbrow by Warren’s standards.

It was nice enough for a valet service, anyway. Warren offered her his arm once they’d relinquished the car and she accepted it with a smile. His answering smile was strained, but it lingered on his face as a softening of his mouth as they made their way through the lobby and past the receptionist without checking in. The silence in her head was still enormous, but the warm pressure of Warren’s arm in hers sanded off the sharp edges, and the elevator ride to the fifth floor wasn’t nearly as tense as the car ride had been.

They stepped out of the elevator and into a deserted hallway. There’d been people in the lobby, guests and staff coming and going, but there were no signs of life there on the fifth floor. There were no doors partway open, no other people walking the hallways, and the carpet swallowed up the sound of their footfalls. Jean felt more and more on edge the further they walked, unconsciously drawing nearer to Warren, but didn’t say anything until Warren found the door he was looking for and gestured her inside.

“Did you buy out the whole floor?” she asked as Warren closed and locked the door behind them. There was a sitting room beyond and to the right of the entryway, with what looked like a kitchen on the other side and two closed doors further down the hall. It was comfortable, but impersonal.

“Yeah,” he said offhandedly. Catching her look, he added, “I told you, I wanted to make sure we weren’t bothered.”

“This is a lot of effort to go to just for some privacy.” On the one hand, Jean wouldn’t put it past Warren to see buying out an entire floor of a hotel as a normal thing to do when one wanted to be left alone, but on the other… “I’m starting to wonder what it is you’re so worried about.”

Warren smiled crookedly. “Honestly? Photographers. But let’s not bother with that now - can you help me?”

Jean helped him loosen the ties on his wing harness once he’d shrugged off the jacket he’d thrown on back at the Baxter Building. His wings were strapped down over red-and-white spandex: not a costume she recognized, and the sight was like a bucket of cold water in her face. Jean herself was still wearing clothes she’d borrowed from Sue Storm, which were better than the space suit, but only just. They weren’t hers, just pieces of someone else’s life that she would have to return eventually, and the fabric grated against her skin.

The sitting room contained a couch and a collection of chairs arranged around a dark wood coffee table. All she really wanted was to turn off for a little while and take a nap, and as she collapsed into one of the armchairs she wondered if Warren was going to keep her awake with more questions. But he stayed on his feet rather than join her and asked, “Do you mind if I call Scott?”

It hadn’t yet occurred to her to contact anyone else, but of course they’d want to see her; they all thought she was dead. It was a strange thought. “Go ahead,” she said.

Warren nodded and retreated down the hall; Jean heard the sound of a door opening and closing. She curled up in her armchair, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She felt like she was living in one of those puzzles where you had to figure out the differences between two pictures; Warren still wore a harness, but the spandex under it was different. The city outside her window looked the same, but if she looked closer she would find that stores had gone out of business and people had moved. She wondered if Warren was thinking much the same about her. From what she understood, Phoenix had been accepted as her by everyone she met, but she hoped now that she was back properly they would see the differences. Part of her was glad that her friends had only had to mourn her for one year instead of three, but at the same time she hated that her life had been stolen like that. She wanted it back, and she wanted it to be hers and hers alone.

It was dark outside when Warren woke her up. She sat up from where she’d sunk down into the armchair and stretched, yawning. “Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to fall asleep on you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Warren said. “It’s been a long day.” His wings almost seemed to glow in the partial darkness.

“What time is it?”

“About ten. Scott’ll be here soon, I thought you’d want to be awake for that.”

“Just Scott?”

“For now,” Warren said. “I didn’t want to overwhelm you. He had a layover in Minneapolis a few hours ago, his plane should be landing soon.”

“Minneapolis?” That woke Jean up. “Where’s he flying in from?”

Warren’s gaze dropped to his feet. “He’s living in Anchorage these days. Has been for about a year.”

“He left the X-Men?”

“Yeah.” Warren didn’t elaborate, but Jean didn’t need her telepathy to figure that one out.

“What _happened?_” It was a question she’d been avoiding all day, at once burning with curiosity for the answer and dreading what that answer would be. She understood the basic sequence of events, but it had been a vague, unemotional outline given to her by Reed Richards. She wanted to hear what Warren had to say.

He sighed and slowly sank into a chair on the other side of the table, and for a moment Jean thought she could see the three extra years on his face. “We thought you’d _died_, Jeannie. We always knew it could happen, but…” He looked up at her, weariness etched into every nook and cranny of his skin. _I’m right here_, she wanted to say, but she stayed silent. “We all took it hard. Scott…ran.”

It didn’t surprise Jean that he had, not really, but it was one thing for Scott to run from a difficult situation and quite another for him to stay away for an entire year. He was always the one who stayed, the one who was committed to the team above all else. She hadn’t held that against him when he’d chosen to stay rather than leave with her and the others, because she couldn’t imagine him doing anything else. But maybe Warren was right, maybe this had simply been too much. The five of them had grown up together, knew each other better than anyone else, and to lose one of them…Jean couldn’t imagine it. The other four had lived it.

“Can we get room service?” she asked.

Eating was a good excuse to not dwell on Scott’s imminent arrival. She had no idea what she was going to say to him and worried that she didn’t know how he would react after three years apart, but it was easy enough to smother those anxieties in penne bolognaise. Dinner was quiet and they finished before Scott arrived, leaving them about half an hour to attempt to make small talk while a current of nervous excitement buzzed under Jean’s skin. She kept glancing in the direction of the entryway while her fingers tapped against her palms, unable to keep still while she waited. And then, finally, there was a knock at the door.

Both of them sprang to their feet at the same time, but Jean hung back while Warren left the room. There was a wall in between her and the door, blocking her view of what was going on but allowing her to hear quiet voices in discussion, though she couldn’t make out the words. A hollow knot formed in her chest and her mouth was dry, all of her restless energy from earlier drained out of her. She was sure they were talking about her - what else would they be talking about? - and not being able to tell what the mood of the conversation was had her mind scrambling for all the worst-case scenarios. Maybe they were all just playacting and didn’t actually want her around, maybe they thought they’d been better off without her, maybe-

She didn’t have time to spiral too much further before she heard footsteps approaching the living room, and then there they were.

The knot in her chest loosened and she took a breath. Scott looked exactly the same as she remembered, his hair tousled, his glasses red, his face unreadable but so, so familiar, like the back of her hand. He was just Scott. She knew him. Three years weren’t nearly enough to change that.

She could see the moment his eyes fell on her: he drew up short, his back straightening. Warren paused beside him. “Jean,” Scott said.

“Scott,” she said in turn, helpless to stop a smile from creeping onto her face. She moved forward, already raising her arms for a hug.

He took a step back.

Every one of her fears came crashing back down on top of her, except this was _worse_ because she hadn’t expected that. She’d expected him to be distant, but she hadn’t expected him to shy away from her. The movement had been small, probably unconscious, and yet she felt as thoroughly rejected as if he’d said outright that he didn’t want to see her.

But he did want to see her. He’d flown all the way from Alaska just to see her. She could understand that this was overwhelming for him, that he just needed some time to adjust. That had to be all it was.

She felt a little calmer, her heart not racing quite as fast as it had been when she’d heard that knock on the door, but she still didn’t know what to say, and Scott certainly wasn’t helping on that front. It was Warren who finally came to their rescue.

“Anyone want a drink?” he asked.

Jean tore her gaze away from Scott. “No, thanks,” she said. Scott shook his head.

Warren shrugged. “Suit yourselves. Go ahead and sit down, I’ll be back in a minute.”

Jean sat down on the couch, unconsciously smoothing wrinkles out of her clothes, and Scott selected the chair Warren had been in earlier. Jean still had no idea where to start, but she knew it was up to her to figure that out; Scott wasn’t going to kick off a conversation. Asking him how he was would be a bad idea. Maybe being direct was the best course of action.

“How much did Warren tell you about what happened?”

Scott shifted in his chair and turned his face away from her. “Enough.”

“Did he tell you about Phoenix and the shuttle?” Jean pressed. She wanted to know what she was working with.

“Yeah,” Scott said. “Jamaica Bay. I heard the story.”

“I told him everything I know,” Warren said. He’d reappeared in the entrance to the room, a glass of something golden-brown in his hand. “But that’s not much.”

“I wish I knew the rest,” Jean said ruefully. “I remember the crash…I remember realizing I could bring the shuttle down, I remember getting everyone else into the life cell…” She remembered having to knock Scott unconscious to save his life. Maybe that was why he was acting so strangely; maybe he was still mad about that. “And now it’s three years later and I’m completely out of the loop. That’s about all I know. Scott, you’re living in Anchorage now, right?”

He nodded. “I’m working as a mechanic. For my grandparents.”

Jean sat up a little straighter. “Grandparents?” That was news to her. Scott never talked much about his biological family, but she’s always been under the impression that all of them were dead apart from Alex.

Scott’s mouth twisted, but he didn’t say anything.

“They run an air cargo business out of Anchorage,” Warren said. “Corsair found out they were still alive and reintroduced them to Scott and Alex.”

“Corsair?” Jean asked, feeling frustration starting to prick at her. She really was out of the loop.

“…oh,” Warren said. “You never met Corsair, did you.”

“Some other fun adventure you guys had without me, huh?” Jean asked. She didn’t want to be mad, she really didn’t, but only receiving half answers to her questions coupled with being mistaken for Phoenix rankled.

“I don’t know if I would call it that,” Warren said. He looked over at Scott, who seemed to be staring pensively at the coffee table.

Jean’s jaw tightened. She just wanted to be back. Was that too much to ask? She wanted to slip back into her old place in the universe, except apparently that spot was currently filled by a corpse.

“Scott, you should probably take this one,” Warren was saying.

Scott shook his head. “Not yet.”

That did it. Not able to contain herself anymore, Jean sprang up from her seat, not paying much mind to the way the couch rattled unnaturally against the floor behind her. “I don’t understand you! I’ve been gone for years and instead of being happy to see me or filling me in on what I’ve missed, you won’t even talk to me! Dammit, what do you want from me?”

Warren had taken a step forward while she was yelling and now raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Jean,” he started to say, but Scott cut him off.

“I’d like it if you were Jean, back from the dead,” he said, his voice careful and measured. “I’d be ecstatic. But I’m not sure that you are.”

“Stop it,” Warren snapped. “I told you, she’s Jean, we figured it all out.”

“You heard a story,” Scott said calmly. “And it could be true, but it could just as easily not be. All the things we’ve seen, Warren, and you don’t think there could be another explanation? That there’s no possibility she isn’t who she says she is?”

“She’s still in the room, thanks very much,” Jean said, crossing her arms over her chest. “And, what, you don’t believe I’m me?” The last sentence came out with more hurt than anger, and suddenly boneless she fell back down into her seat.

The corner of Scott’s mouth twitched downwards. “We all believed that Phoenix was Jean Grey. If you’re going to tell me she wasn’t, well, obviously I can’t trust myself to tell the difference.”

Jean’s breath caught in her throat.

Warren wasn’t looking at her now either. He’d been happy to see her and he’d protested when Scott had doubted her, but now she wondered how much of that had been genuine. The worst part was that, in their place, she wasn’t sure she’d react any differently. They’d all seen their fair share of shapeshifters and robots and whatnot, and her coming back to tell them that the woman they’d spent two years with and mourned for another one had been a liar, a fake…how could she convince them that she was any different?

“I am Jean,” she said. She knew it wasn’t enough, but she didn’t have anything else to offer.

“I’m sorry,” Scott said, standing up. “I shouldn’t have - I should go.”

“You just got here,” Warren said. “We can’t work this out if you leave.” Jean felt as if she were hearing their words from the next room over.

“I’m sorry,” Scott said again.

He left the room; Jean heard the door open and close and then Warren was following him calling, “Scotty!” and she was left alone to stare at the empty chair where her best friend had been sitting just moments before.


	2. Chapter 2

Scott didn’t come back.

Jean hadn’t expected him to, but his departure had left a hollow ache in her chest. She knew now too that Warren felt the same way, or at least she suspected he did, and that didn’t help. At least if he’d been overtly suspicious she would’ve had something to push back against, but as it was she didn’t want to seem like she was making something out of nothing and so she was left between a rock and a hard place, needing to fix everything but having nowhere to start.

“Has anyone told the rest of the team yet?” Jean asked the afternoon after Scott left, while she and Warren were busy trying to pretend that everything was okay. Jean had yet to leave the room; Warren had ducked out that morning and returned with a bag of clothes for her, which she appreciated, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being kept under house arrest.

“Oh,” Warren said. “No. I guess we should talk about that.”

They’d just finished up room-service lunch, Jean chasing the last bits of alfredo sauce with her fork. Now, hearing Warren’s words, her fork stopped moving around and she asked, “Why? Did something happen?”

“Everyone’s fine,” Warren reassured her. “But a lot’s changed and, well, Magneto’s running the school now.”

“_What?_” Jean, bewildered, thought he had to be joking, but his queasy half-smiled belied that. “How in the world did that happen?”

“I have no idea,” Warren said. “The Professor’s in space, but I don’t know why Magneto was chosen to replace him. Ororo’s field leader now and I’m sure she has her reasons, but we’ve been steering clear of the X-Men lately. I haven’t had a chance to ask.”

Jean tried to process that. Magneto, a member of the X-Men? Headmaster of the school? The thought was laughable. Warren was right, Ororo must have allowed it for a reason, but for the life of her Jean couldn’t imagine what it might be.

“Is that why, you know,” she gestured around herself, “we have a whole floor of a hotel to ourselves, and everything? You said you were trying to avoid photographers, but…”

“I’m definitely more worried about a photo of the late Jean Grey making it back to Magneto than I am the man himself crashing our little reunion party,” Warren said. “Honestly, whatever his motives are, I doubt we’re high on his list of priorities. But telling the team would be…complicated.”

“To say the least,” Jean said, “but we can’t keep them in the dark forever. They’re my friends, they have a right to know I’m back.”

“I won’t stop you,” Warren said. “But I didn’t want you walking into that uninformed, either.”

“I know,” Jean said. “Thanks.” She ran her fingers up and over her scalp, drawing her hair behind her ears. “What about Hank and Bobby? Are they safe to contact, do you think?”

“Neither of them are involved with the team anymore,” Warren said. “They should be fine.”

Warren insisted on calling them, arguing that it would be suspicious for Jean to contact them herself to announce her resurrection. She didn’t disagree, but after the disaster with Scott, listening to half a conversation about her was nerve-wracking.

She needn’t have worried. They both arrived within a half-hour and were ecstatic to see her, Hank lifting her off the floor in a huge bear hug and Bobby proudly proclaiming that he’d left work without leave while hugging her less powerfully but just as enthusiastically.

“I’m pretty sure you got shorter,” Bobby said, patting her on the head.

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t,” she said. “How are you two? Warren was telling me a little…”

“No, nope, we’re not doing this here in a hotel,” Bobby said. “Time for a classic Original X-Men night out! All on Third’s tab, of course.”

“Bobby, you can pay for your own dinner,” Warren said with the tone of voice of someone who knew he’d already lost the argument.

“Not when I’m going out to eat with a millionaire!”

Warren rolled his eyes but offered up no more resistance.

It was the most fun she’d had since being fished out of Jamaica Bay. Scott’s absence was constantly gnawing at the back of her mind, but she was able to forget that for a time and focus on the people who were there. Conversation over dinner started out as stories from her missing years - small, trifling things, and nothing involving Phoenix, which she appreciated - and then evolved into recounting stories from their shared childhood, stories she’d experienced firsthand. She did still have a place there among her friends. She still belonged.

“What are your plans now, Jean?” Hank asked at one point. “I assume Warren’s told you about the sticky situation with the X-Men.”

“He did,” Jean said. “And I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet.” She knew that hiding in a hotel room with Warren couldn’t last forever, of course, but she still hadn’t thought much about what she was going to do now that she was back from the dead. She was twenty-four (twenty-seven?) and without much work experience that didn’t involve a lot of spandex and property damage. Her lack of options was overwhelming.

“There’s time for that later,” Warren said. Jean wondered if the cheer in his voice was manufactured. “For now I think we’re all just happy to have you back.”

“Hear, hear,” Bobby said, and raised his glass for a toast. Jean clinked glasses with the rest of them, forced a smile and tried not to dwell on whether or not Warren’s statement applied to Scott, or just the three others at the table.

It was late enough by the time that she and Warren finally got back to the hotel that she didn’t have energy for more than changing into her pajamas and falling into bed. She and Warren had fallen asleep in the same bed the night before, regardless of the second bedroom, and they did so again without comment. The feeling of a wing draped over her torso and a warm body next to hers was a comfort, a grounding presence that helped to stop her thoughts from racing as wildly as they often did at night and softened the ache of her missing telepathy. Snuggled up to Warren she was able to relax into the warmth of the bed and fall asleep.

She called Scott when she woke up the next morning. Warren pointed out that it was awfully early in Anchorage to be calling, but handed over the phone number anyway. The call rang to voicemail, not unexpectedly, and the message was so quintessentially Scott - all awkward and quiet and full of overlong pauses - that she almost hung up in a fit of upset before leaving a message for him. She did, though, not saying much more than a request that he call her back, and hung up the phone feeling despondent and out of sorts. Warren was waiting for her in the sitting room once she felt calm enough to leave the bedroom.

“I need to get back to my own place eventually,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be today, but I can’t stay here forever. Would you…want to come with me?”

Jean wasn’t sure why, but the suggestion bothered her. Maybe it was the reminder that Warren had somewhere else to go while she was floating, anchorless. “I’ll think about it,” she said, and they left it there.

Jean tried calling Scott a few more times throughout the day, feeling stupid and clingy as she kept leaving him messages but also not wanting him to forget that she was there and thinking about him. When she called him just before going to bed and he still didn’t pick up she let herself acknowledge that she was worried.

“He shouldn’t still be at work, right?” she asked Warren. “Why isn’t he answering?”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Warren said. “You know how he gets.”

Which she did, of course, and maybe it wasn’t all that surprising that Scott wasn’t picking up the phone, but now that she was settling back into her life and spending time with her other friends she felt his absence all the more keenly. He was supposed to be there with them, celebrating, not avoiding her. They needed him. _She_ needed him.

Instead of saying any of that out loud she asked, “Do you have his address?”

“I do,” Warren said slowly. “But you know there’s every chance you could show up on his front stoop and he’d still close the door in your face.”

“He won’t if he knows what’s good for him,” Jean said grimly.

Warren sighed. “All right. Let me get you set up with a credit card and we can try to find you a flight to Anchorage.”

Warren drove her to the airport the next morning and saw her off. It was a long flight to Alaska, and she tried to sleep some of it away, but she’d never had much luck sleeping on planes. Usually that was because everyone around her was tired and uncomfortable and nervous and irritable and their emotions in her head wouldn’t let her turn off, but now it was too quiet. She knew the other passengers were still feeling all of those things, but she no longer had access to them. She was cut off, all alone in her own little world.

When she finally made it to her hotel room it had been nearly twelve hours since she’d said her goodbyes to Warren, and all she wanted to do was fall into bed and sleep a little while. She was on a mission, though, so she forced herself to just drop her luggage off and call a cab, giving the driver the address she’d scribbled down on a piece of scrap paper back in New York.

Jean asked the driver to wait outside the apartment building when they arrived, unsure what sort of reception she was going to get - if any. It was possible Scott wasn’t at home or wouldn’t buzz her up, but she figured she at least had to try. She wasn’t above looking up his grandparents’ business and tracking him down there if need be, but first things first.

Jean pressed the number for his room on the intercom panel and said, “Scott? It’s Jean. Are you there?”

It was spring, but spring in Anchorage was colder than spring in New York, and on top of that the sun was starting to inch towards the horizon and she was in shadow. The light sweater she had on wasn’t doing nearly enough to block out the chill. She pushed the button again and said, “Scott, seriously, it’s freezing. Can you let me in?”

The answer to her question came not from the intercom but rather from behind her, and definitely not from Scott. “Looking for Mr. Summers?”

She turned around, startled - she hadn’t sensed anyone approaching - to find a man standing on the steps behind her. He looked to be somewhere in his 50s, with a baseball cap pulled over his face and a plastic bag emblazoned with the word CARRS in his hand.

“Yes, I am,” she said, recovering. “Do you know him?”

The man offered his free hand to her and she shook it. “Mike,” he offered. “I live across the hall from Scott. He hasn’t been around in a few days now.”

Scott hadn’t come home? Jean had assumed that when he’d left he’d come back to Anchorage, but maybe he was still in New York. Maybe that was why he hadn’t picked up his phone. Running all the way to Alaska suddenly seemed incredibly foolish. “Do you have any idea where he might be?” Jean asked.

“I can guess,” Mike said. “Do you have a piece of paper?”

Jean produced her piece of scrap and wrote the new address underneath the first. “Thanks,” she said. “Really, this is - thank you.”

“No trouble at all,” Mike said. “It was lovely meeting you, Miss Grey.”

“You, too,” she said, and then she was back in the cab, being driven to her second attempt at making things right.

Their destination was just beyond the edge of the city with a long driveway leading back into the woods. It was fully twilight by then, with only the light from the cab’s headlights to show the way. Soon enough, though, the house came into view, light spilling out from a large bay window that provided a glimpse into the front room. As she watched, she saw someone pass in front of the window - just for a moment, but she was sure it had been Scott, sure she’d caught a glimpse of red glasses.

She paid the driver, got out of the cab, and mounted the steps to the small wooden porch, hoping she hadn’t made a mistake. She took a deep breath to steady herself and rang the doorbell.

The answer didn’t come immediately, and Jean could feel the pound of her pulse under her skin as she waited. Before too long she heard the telltale sounds of a deadbolt being unlatched from the other side of the door before it swung open. Jean’s heart stuttered.

“Oh, shit,” the woman on the other side said. “You must be Jean.”


	3. Chapter 3

Jean followed the stranger into the house, every single one of her senses on high alert. She could feel adrenaline pumping through her veins, battle-honed instincts telling her to prepare for a fight.

“Who _are_ you?” Jean asked once the door was bolted shut behind her.

The woman grinned at her. The effect was uncanny, like staring into a funhouse mirror. “Madelyne Pryor,” she said, which didn’t actually answer Jean’s question. “You here for Scott?”

“Yes.” Jean had a mind to run back to the hotel and call Warren and demand answers or backup or _something_, but if Scott was there…

“You can sit down,” Madelyne said, waving a hand towards the front room beyond the foyer. She turned away without waiting for Jean to comply and shouted, “Scott, visitor!” down the adjacent hallway. Jean thought she heard a response, but couldn’t make out what had been said.

Madelyne turned back to shoo her into the front room and Jean perched on the edge of a chair, tense and hyperaware of everything going on around her. She wanted to stay on her feet, battle-ready, but if it wasn’t for Madelyne _having her face_, she had to admit that nothing about the situation would seem suspicious. A little confusing, maybe, but hardly alarming. The front room looked entirely normal, furniture and blankets and books and a fireplace, everything looking lived-in and used. So she sat down. For the time being.

Madelyne sat down about as far away from Jean as she could get, but Jean didn’t have the chance to decide if she wanted to say something before Scott made his entrance.

He stopped when he saw Jean, hesitating on the threshold. He looked tired, drawn, but Jean was too distracted by the baby cradled in his arms to analyze his appearance.

“Who’s this?” she asked, taking the excuse to stand right back up again.

Scott glanced briefly at Madelyne, who stood up as well, and said, “Rachel. My daughter.”

His daughter. “Yours and…?” She couldn’t stop her gaze from wandering over to Madelyne, who had moved to stand next to Scott.

“Oh, no, no, no, no, no,” Madelyne said, waving her hands in denial.

“Thanks,” Scott muttered, but there was a small smile playing on his lips.

“Oh,” Jean said.

Scott turned his attention back to her. “How did you know I was here?”

“Mike gave me the address.”

Scott’s smile faded and a furrow appeared between his eyebrows.

Madelyne elbowed him. “You need to tell your creepy neighbor to stop doing things like that.”

“He’s not creepy,” Scott said. “He’s just…a little strange.”

“No, _you’re_ a little strange. _He’s_ creepy.”

Scott shook his head with a smile, and Jean was struck by how comfortable he seemed with Madelyne. How long had it taken them to get to that point? They couldn’t have known each other for more than a year, right?

“Are you a mutant?” she blurted out.

“No,” Madelyne said, not missing a beat. “Or at least not as far as I know.”

Jean shook her head. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“We’re in the same boat, then.”

_But I was here first_, Jean wanted to say.

Scott adjusted his grip on Rachel, who made a small unhappy noise before settling again. Jean looked over at him, expecting him to say something, but he looked away from her and kept quiet.

“I’m gonna go start on dinner,” Madelyne said into the ensuing silence. “Hope you like spaghetti, Jean.”

“I’ll come help,” Scott said, but Madelyne shook her head.

“No, you two talk. Sorry, three,” and she poked Rachel’s nose.

Jean wasn’t sorry to see Madelyne leave the room, but now she had to face Scott on her own. She’d come all this way for a reason, though, and she was determined to make the most of it. Hopefully being alone with Scott would give her the opportunity to learn a little more about what was going on.

“We should sit down,” Scott said finally, moving past her and into the front room. Jean followed. The ball was in her court, but she knew that if she made a wrong move now she was at risk of bringing them back to square one. Scott hadn’t shut down upon seeing her the way he had back in New York, and she didn’t want him to close himself off from her again.

She started with something easy.

“She’s beautiful,” she said, nodding towards Rachel with a smile. The baby had woken up when Scott sat down and seemed torn between wanting to get down and tugging on her dad’s shirt buttons.

“I know,” Scott said, smiling once again.

“You never answered me about her second parent. Does she have another parent?”

Scott didn’t answer, apparently too absorbed in bouncing a giggling Rachel on his knees, but a tightening of his mouth and a furrowing of his brow betrayed him.

“I can always go make Warren tell me the rest of the story, but I’d rather hear it from you,” she said. Scott had always struggled with sharing personal information, but he hadn’t been this bad with her since they were teenagers. Had the last three years really been enough to undo that trust between them? The thought was terrifying.

“I know,” Scott said, still not looking at her. “But I’m not sure how to say it.” Rachel was bouncing herself now, standing up on Scott’s legs and supported by his hands. She was cute, Jean thought, just like all babies - too young to see if she looked much like Scott, though her hair was lighter, almost…red?

Oh.

Maybe she should have figured that out already. It was obvious in hindsight.

“Rachel’s mom,” Scott said, “she…”

“Phoenix,” Jean said softly.

He nodded. Swallowed. “Rachel was born just months before…” He stopped, collecting himself, and continued: “Just months before J- Phoenix died.”

“I’m sorry.”

Scott shook his head. “Whoever she was, whatever she was, she’s gone now.”

“Do you believe me now?” Jean asked. “That I’m Jean?” Maybe giving him a couple of days to think about it had helped. She couldn’t imagine it was easy to accept that the woman he’d been with and loved for two years hadn’t been who he’d thought she was, but she still needed him to accept it. For her own sake, if not for his.

“I don’t know,” Scott said. His voice was still and blank, with no hint of emotion, which meant that he was holding something back. “Part of me wants to. Part of me doesn’t.”

“I don’t know how I can prove it to you.”

“Neither do I. Guess we’re at an impasse.”

“No,” Jean said. “I’m not just going to give up. There has to be _something_ I can do. Doesn’t it make sense that I’d be at the bottom of Jamaica Bay? And you can talk to the Avengers or to Reed Richards, he’d be able to explain how I stayed alive for so long.”

She thought that offering up outside sources of confirmation would help, that maybe he would trust a second or third opinion, but he said, “It could still be a setup.”

“Then why are you even letting me in here?” Jean asked, frustrated. “Why are you letting me near your daughter if you don’t trust me?”

Scott opened his mouth to respond and then closed it, considering. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft. “You feel like Jean to me. You really do. But so did Phoenix. The two of us, we had a bond - a psychic connection. We were always in each other’s heads. That connection is still there, in my head, but there’s nothing on the other side of it anymore. I know she was real. And when I was in her head, she felt like Jean. That’s all I know.”

“I’m real, too,” Jean said.

Scott sighed. “I’m sorry. I just want to be careful. Someone has to be.”

“It doesn’t always have to be you.”

He half-smiled. “It sure seems like it does.”

There wasn’t much she could say in response. Scott turned his attention back to Rachel after a moment of silence while Jean turned his words over and over in her mind. When he’d flown out to New York to see her he’d been cold and shut-off, and that had hurt. Now, though, he seemed more like himself. She watched him trying to stop Rachel from undoing his shirt with a small but genuine smile on his face and thought, _that’s Scott_. Watching him play gently with his daughter, the distance between them didn’t feel so insurmountable. He was scared; so was she. They’d figure it out.

“You should come back to New York,” Jean said eventually. “Just for a visit,” she added, seeing Scott about to protest. “Warren and I met up with Bobby and Hank yesterday, it sounded like they haven’t seen you in a while.”

“They haven’t,” Scott admitted. “Maybe. I-”

Whatever he was going to say was interrupted by a voice behind Jean announcing, “Dinner’s ready, if you two are done.” Jean twisted around to find Madelyne at the entrance to the front room. “Come and get it while it’s hot.”

Jean stood up. “I can call a cab,” she said.

“No, I made enough for all of us,” Madelyne said. “Besides, we’d have to sit around and wait for you and our food would get cold. C’mon.”

Dinner was a quiet, awkward affair; no one seemed willing to engage in small talk, and the silence around the table gave Jean time to think.

She could only barely remember piloting the shuttle after everyone else had left her to go into the life cell. She remembered being afraid for both herself and her friends, and she remembered thinking that she was dying…but it was all hazy, fragmented. She didn’t remember exactly how she ended up at the bottom of Jamaica Bay, but there was something there - warmth and light and pain. Phoenix, maybe. She wondered if it would have been better if she’d just died - she’d been prepared to do so, after all, and at least then her friends’ grief wouldn’t have been in vain. And she wouldn’t have lost Scott.

No, she corrected herself, she would have, she just wouldn’t have known it. But Scott would have lost her, as would all of the others, and did she really think that was the best outcome? Besides, she had no guarantee that anyone on that shuttle would have survived if not for Phoenix, whatever her role in the crash might have been. Jean certainly didn’t remember getting close enough to think about landing the shuttle - she’d probably been unconscious long before that, and a bad crash could have killed even the people in the life cell. Their survival was more important. And she was back now, regardless of what had happened before. That had to count for something.

Jean slowly pulled herself out of her thoughts and watched Rachel push her cut-up spaghetti noodles around her tray. After dinner Scott went to go put Rachel down for the night, and Jean offered to help Madelyne clean up.

“You know,” Madelyne said conversationally while scrubbing out the saucepan, “I’d seen pictures of you before, but seeing you in the flesh is something else.”

Jean wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Madelyne may have seen pictures of her before, but Jean had walked up to her front door totally ignorant of what was waiting on the other side. “How did you and Scott meet?” she asked, hoping the change of subject wouldn’t be pointed out.

“We grew up together,” Madelyne said, handing over a plate to be dried. “We hadn’t stayed in contact, though, and I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him since we were kids. Imagine my surprise when I found out my bosses were members of _that_ Summers family when I went to pick up their grandson from the airport!”

Did that mean they’d known each other before the plane crash? Jean wanted to ask, but she wasn’t sure how much Madelyne might know and didn’t want to break the fragile thread of trust she was trying to rebuild with Scott. He’d never mentioned knowing her doppelganger as a child, but maybe he hadn’t remembered her clearly or simply hadn’t connected the face of a child with that of a teenager. “That must have been some reunion,” she said.

“I guess,” Madelyne said. “It’s good to have him back, even if it’s not under the best of circumstances.”

“How much has he told you about Phoenix?”

Madelyne snorted. “What, the third member of our weird little trifecta? Not much, and none of it made any sense, but I’m used to that with his X-Men stories.”

“He’s told you about the X-Men?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Jean wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

“Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?” Madelyne asked, passing her another dish. “Scott and Rachel are in the guest room, but you can crash on the couch if you want.”

“No, thank you,” Jean said hurriedly. “I have a hotel room.”

Madelyne shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“Do you have money?”

Jean startled, but when she turned it was only Scott, leaning against the kitchen wall behind her.

“Yes,” she said. “Well, I have Warren’s. I haven’t gotten all of that sorted out yet.” She wondered if Phoenix had written a will. She - Jean - hadn’t, which now seemed like a ridiculous oversight. Probably her parents had all of her money and whatever possessions they’d decided to keep.

Scott nodded.

“Can we meet up for lunch tomorrow?” Jean asked. “I still have a lot to catch up on.”

Scott’s mouth twisted up and she thought he was going to turn her down but then he said, “Sure. Should I pick you up at the hotel?”

“That would be great,” Jean said, relieved. “I’ll get you the details…”

While she was writing down the hotel address for him, Scott confirmed with Madelyne that she’d be able to watch Rachel the next day and kept apologizing for putting her out on such short notice. She dismissed his concerns, though, saying it was fine and that she and Rachel could survive together for a day.

Jean was exhausted when she finally made it back to her hotel room, but she had one more thing to take care of before she could fall asleep. Warren answered his phone after three rings; he sounded tired, and she remembered belatedly that Alaska was four hours behind New York. Oops.

“Did I wake you up?” she asked guiltily.

“Nah,” Warren said. “Late night. What’s up?”

“I found Scott.”

“How is he?”

“He’s…Scott,” Jean said, and Warren chuckled. “How well do you know Madelyne?”

That made him sober up. “Not well,” he said. “I’ve only met her once. I take it she was there?”

“Scott’s staying with her.”

“Ah.” Warren didn’t sound surprised.

“It would’ve been nice to get some warning before I walked into all that.”

“It was Scott’s story to tell, not mine.”

“Bullshit,” Jean snapped. “Okay, maybe Rachel and all of that was his to tell me, but you at least could’ve warned me about her! I bet you weren’t eager to tell me that you’d all replaced me, but how do you think I felt seeing that face?”

“Jean, we didn’t replace you,” Warren said. “Okay, yeah, Phoenix did, but we didn’t know. And Madelyne’s nothing like you. You look similar, sure, but-”

“We look _identical_,” Jean corrected him. “Does no one but me think that’s strange, especially after Phoenix?”

“We’ve only just found out about Phoenix,” Warren said, frustratingly calm and patient in the face of her anger. “And yeah, of course we thought it was weird. Scott was working with her for months before any of us even knew she existed because he didn’t know how to handle it. But, I don’t know, isn’t everyone supposed to have a doppelganger somewhere? I guess she’s yours.”

Having two doppelgangers appear within a few years of each other, both of whom knew her friends, couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, but Jean was bouncing between anxieties too quickly to bother to stop and finish dealing with that before she moved on to something else. “And Scott had a daughter with Phoenix? I can’t wrap my head around that.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Warren said. “Rachel’s a good kid.”

“I’m not doubting that, but…” _But I always thought we’d have a daughter._ And now Scott had one, a little red-haired girl who was both hers and not hers, and Jean didn’t know where to start dealing with that. “I don’t know what to do if Scott won’t talk to me. Properly, I mean.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

“Not if Scott won’t talk to me!”

“He’ll come around,” Warren said. “We all took your death really hard, but Scott saw it happen. He felt it happen. It might take him a while to come to terms with you being back and what that means, but he will.”

Jean felt a sickening lurch in the general area of her stomach. _He felt it happen._ Scott had told her about the psychic link he’d had with Phoenix, but Jean hadn’t made the connection between that and her death. Scott had felt her die. Jean knew exactly what that was like. She wouldn’t wish that on anyone, and especially not her friends.

She was silent for too long and finally Warren said, “You should get some rest. Are you coming back?”

“Not yet,” she said. “I’ll let you know when I have plans.”

“All right. Call me if you need anything.”

Jean collapsed straight into bed once the call ended, but as tired as she was she just couldn’t fall asleep. She tossed and turned as her mind whirred about, darting from thought to thought. Could she really blame her friends for not trusting her? Did she have the fortitude to weather this, to keep trying to win them back? And she couldn’t stop thinking about Phoenix, how she’d felt in those last few moments, how Scott had felt in those last few moments. Had it been better because it was so quick? How long had it taken for Scott to recover? Had Phoenix been afraid, had she mourned the loss of a life with her family, the loss of her own life, or had she been glad to leave? Had Jean stolen Phoenix’s life? But it had never really been her life, had it? Jean had taken back what was rightfully hers, that was all.

Tomorrow she was going to see Scott again. They were going to have lunch and talk, and she might be forced into playing a long game, but she could do that. She could earn her life back.


	4. Chapter 4

Jean’s eyelids were still sticky with sleep when she managed to roll out of bed. She hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, keeping herself awake trying to figure out a plan for the day, and she could tell she was going to be paying for that before she got a couple cups of coffee in her. The hotel she was staying at had a free continental breakfast, and she ended up taking her paper plate and styrofoam cup back to her room; being around so many strangers without her telepathy was still nervewracking, even if they were just a bunch of sleepy tourists.

The free time before lunch gave her too much time to think. She had a couple sci-fi paperbacks she’d picked up at the airport to keep her company, but she found herself reading the same paragraph over and over again, unable to concentrate on anything but the looming lunch date with Scott. She had something of a plan and had grabbed a street map of Anchorage from the lobby to help her out with it, but she worried it was going to prove to be too much, too soon. Still, she had to do _something_.

Time inched onwards at a snail’s pace, but finally her room’s phone rang to let her know that Scott had arrived, and she was out of her room so quickly she almost neglected to close the door behind her. Her heart was beating about a mile a minute by the time she made it into the lobby.

She greeted Scott with a wide smile and he returned it, making her feel all warm and bubbly. Maybe this was a good idea after all.

“Any preferences?” he asked once they were settled in his car.

“You know what I like,” she said. “Surprise me.” Scott was also more familiar with the options, of course, but she wanted to remind him that he knew her, that just because Phoenix had fooled him didn’t mean he didn’t know who Jean Grey was.

They ended up at a little café in the city that specialized in local cuisine; Jean ordered a bagel sandwich with smoked salmon and a coffee - the effects of her first cup plus adrenaline would only last so long. The air was crisp, but the sun was out and warm on her face, the sky a cloudless blue. The weather felt like a good omen, a sign that the day would turn out all right.

“You said you’re working with your grandparents?” Jean asked.

Scott took a moment to swallow a bite of his own sandwich before saying, “Yeah. I needed a change of scenery and they needed a mechanic. It worked out.”

“I hadn’t even realized you had grandparents.” It was just another unsettling sign of how long she’d been gone. Scott’s orphanhood had been as integral to her mental picture of him as his mutation, and now apparently it was forfeit. Which was a good thing, of course, she was glad he’d found them, but she also wished she could’ve been there with him when he made that discovery.

“I didn’t, either,” Scott said. “Did Warren explain Corsair to you?”

Jean shook her head. She remembered that name being mentioned, but she’d never asked Warren about it.

“It’s going to sound ridiculous,” Scott warned her.

“What else is new?”

And so Scott explained how the X-Men had met honest-to-goodness aliens, how they’d run across a crew of space pirates and how he’d eventually discovered that their leader was his father Christopher. It was a fantastical story, one straight out of the paperbacks she had back in her hotel room, but she had no doubt that Scott was telling her the truth. She’d seen stranger things in her life; aliens weren’t all that far-fetched, all things considered.

“That’s quite a story,” she said, unable to keep from laughing. “How are you handling all that?”

She could see the moment that Scott shut down and blocked her out. “It was an adjustment,” he said, and turned back to his sandwich.

Biting back a sigh, she tried to steer the conversation back towards safer ground. “What are your grandparents like?”

Scott shrugged. At first she thought he wasn’t going to offer up anything more than that, but then he said hesitantly, “If you’re okay with staying for another day or two, maybe you could meet them?”

“Did they meet Phoenix?” Jean had meant to keep that errant thought to herself, she really had, but it slipped right out of her mouth anyway.

“No. I didn’t find out about them until…after.”

“I’m sorry,” Jean said. “It’s just…”

“I know. Madelyne also works for them, though, so there will be something to explain.”

“She said you grew up together,” Jean remembered. “Did you meet her when you lived here as a kid?”

Scott shook his head, frowning. “No, I met her when I moved up here last year. She’s from the Midwest originally.”

“Huh.” Jean wondered why Madelyne would have told her otherwise. Maybe Scott just didn’t remember her from when they were kids, but then why wouldn’t she have told him at some point? But why would she bother lying to Jean about that? The whole situation was getting stranger by the minute.

“Have you contacted the X-Men yet?” Scott asked.

“No,” Jean said. “I know I should, but Warren told me about the situation with Magneto…”

“Hm,” was all Scott said.

“Are you still in contact with them?”

“Not really.”

The rest of the lunch proceeded in much the same way, with Jean asking questions about Scott’s life while trying to avoid anything too difficult for either of them. They’d settled into mostly comfortable conversation by the time they left, which had Jean hopeful about the next stage of her plan.

“Are you up for going somewhere else for a little while before we go back?” she asked as Scott started the car.

“Sure,” he said. “Where?”

“It’s a secret,” she said, brandishing the roadmap she’d had tucked into her purse. “I’ll tell you where to go.”

Scott raised his eyebrows at her but didn’t protest, and he let her guide them away from the café. She got them turned around a couple of times and had to course-correct, but between her map and Scott’s knowledge of Anchorage it was mostly smooth going.

When they were just minutes from their destination Scott said, “Jean…”

She looked over at him to find his brow furrowed and his fingers tight on the steering wheel. He’d figured out where they were going, but he didn’t stop or try to turn around, and neither did he seem to need her directions anymore. She wondered if he’d been to their destination since he’d moved back.

The parking lot was mostly empty when they arrived. “Come on,” Jean said, and hopped out of the car before either of them could rethink this. Scott followed, albeit more slowly.

She led him to a picnic table close to the lake, where they could sit and watch the floatplanes coming and going. They sat in silence together for a little while, Jean enjoying the lakeside breeze in her hair and the background noise of the planes. The park was mostly empty, with just a few people within eyesight strolling through or sitting on the grass. It felt normal, sitting there with Scott, like nothing had happened and they were on vacation together. It felt good.

“You told me once that you used to come here with your parents and Alex,” Jean said eventually. “It was one of the few detailed memories you still had of your life before the crash.”

Scott didn’t say anything.

Not daring to look at him, Jean continued, “You said that you know Phoenix was real, and I can’t dispute that. But I remember you telling me about this place. I know that memory’s real and I know I’m real and I know I’m really Jean Grey, but Jean Grey doesn’t know how to fix this.”

Scott started to say her name but choked on it and stopped. Jean risked a look at him and saw that he’d turned away from the lake and was hunched over the table with his elbows propped up on it, his mouth pressed into his folded hands. Jean reached out across the table, letting her hand rest halfway between them, and said, “I miss you. Maybe that’s selfish of me. I know you’re dealing with a lot right now and so am I, but I can’t help but think that we’d have an easier time if we dealt with everything together. And…I _miss_ you.”

It was utter torture, sitting there with her hand in the middle of the table and her heart exposed. Finally, though, Scott reached out to rest one of his hands on top of hers - not grabbing, just lying there, his skin warm against hers. “I miss you, too,” he said. “God, Jean, I miss you so much. But I don’t know what to think.”

“Can you start with trying to trust me?” Jean asked. “At least with the small things. If we have to work back up to where we were, I can live with that. But you’re my best friend and I don’t want that to change. I don’t want this to be it for us.”

“I can try,” Scott said.

They stayed at that picnic table for hours, talking about everything and nothing. Their hands stayed between them, not tangled up together but still touching, the gentle pressure of skin on skin, and there was a little warm glow snaking up Jean’s arm and pooling in her stomach that reminded her of when they were kids and every bit of physical contact between them had been enough to give her butterflies. The conversation was less forced that it had been at lunch, and if they still weren’t digging too deep into the hard topics, they felt less urgent. And they didn’t completely avoid them, either; they talked a little about what Jean had missed, helping her to fill in some of the blanks, and Scott even occasionally mentioned something about Phoenix. He wasn’t telling her everything, but that was fine; she was willing to take it slow. He invited her to come eat dinner again with him and Madelyne that evening and she agreed, warmed by the purposeful inclusion.

Eventually, though, the light started to fail, and Scott looked ruefully at his watch “We should get going,” he said. “I didn’t mean to leave Rachel with Lynn for this long.”

“Why are you staying with her, anyway?” Jean asked as she got up from the table.

Scott rubbed at the back of his neck, embarrassed. “It’s been a rough year,” he said as they meandered through the parking lot. “Sometimes it’s easier when I’m not the only adult in the house. I return the favor for Lynn, too, when she needs it.” He shrugged.

They were about halfway back to Madelyne’s house before Jean worked up the courage to ask another question that had been eating at her. “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but…what’s the story behind Rachel?”

“Oh,” Scott said. “She was actually an accident, if you can believe that.”

“I’m willing to believe just about anything at this point,” Jean said, “but that’s stretching my tolerance a little too far.” You didn’t accidentally adopt a child or use a donor, and the red hair probably meant Phoenix had carried her, so - “Was she _cheating_ on you?”

“No!” Scott said. “God, no, nothing like that. I mean, we never bothered with a paternity test, but you have to understand, the things Phoenix could do…her power was incredible. Unbelievable.”

“She impregnated herself,” Jean realized. “She could _do_ that?” If that were true, then she’d vastly underestimated Phoenix.

“It was an accident, like I said,” Scott said. “I don’t think she realized she could do it either, until it happened.”

Jean settled into a discontented silence. There was so much she didn’t know, so much she could only guess, so much that she didn’t have basic context for. Phoenix had _impregnated herself_, and everyone had just accepted that Jean could do things like that? She couldn’t imagine it. It was too big, too much.

If Scott could sense her discomfort, he didn’t say anything, and in what felt like no time at all they were pulling into Madelyne’s driveway. Jean tried to set her thoughts aside. For now, she thought as she waited for Scott to find his key, she could put that aside and try to enjoy the rest of the evening.

Scott finally found the key he was looking for but frowned when he tried to unlock the front door. He took the key out and tried the doorknob, which turned easily under his hand. “Huh,” he said. “Guess it’s unlocked.”


	5. Chapter 5

The lights in the house were turned on, but when Scott called out for Madelyne there was no response.

“I guess they must have gone out,” he said, but he was frowning.

“Wasn’t that Madelyne’s car in the driveway?” Jean asked.

“Yeah…”

There was no evidence of wrongdoing that she could identify, but Jean still knew that something wasn’t right. The house was too still, too quiet, and she couldn’t stop thinking about how long they’d stayed out…

“They must be sleeping,” Scott said. “I’ll go check on them.”

Jean nodded, and she supposed an evening nap wasn’t out of the question even for Madelyne, but she couldn’t shake off the eerie stillness of the house. She moved into the kitchen, out of sight of Scott as he started opening doors in the hallway, and found everything normal, dishes in the sink, a glass out on the counter, a hand towel hanging off the back of a chair. It looked fine, but it didn’t feel fine.

She heard Scott walking back down the hall towards her and moved back into the entryway to meet him. “They’re not here,” he said. “The lights are all on and they’re just _gone_.” The only signs of his distress were his fingers as they fidgeted with the sleeves of his sweater and the way his voice was slowly creeping upwards in volume. “But there’s no sign of a fight that I can see…”

“I don’t think a one-year-old can put up much of a fight,” Jean said, not unkindly.

“Maddie would have fought.”

“Not if she’s the one responsible.”

Scott recoiled from her. “_What?_”

Jean pinched the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes shut so she wouldn’t have to look at him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you trust her, but you have to see that something’s wrong here. I show up and a day later we leave Madelyne alone with Rachel and now they’ve vanished without a trace? Something’s _wrong_, Scott.”

“Obviously,” Scott said, his voice tight, “but Madelyne’s had so many opportunities to, to take Rachel, if that was what she wanted.” His fingers were digging so hard into his sweater that he was in danger of ripping holes in it. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Neither does vanishing without a trace.”

Scott was shaking his head. “You don’t know her. She wouldn’t do anything like this, this is…” He cut himself off and shook his head. “She wouldn’t do this,” he repeated.

Jean decided to pick her battles. “Okay, well, regardless, we need to figure out what to do. I don’t suppose you saw anything helpful in the other rooms?”

“No,” Scott said. He turned away from her and started pacing, up and down the length of the entryway. “I think you should go back to New York. Meet up with Warren and the others. Maybe you can figure something out together.”

“Why not just call them? We don’t know how far Madelyne and Rachel might’ve gone, it would be counterproductive for me to go all the way to New York if they’re still in Anchorage.”

“You’re right, we don’t know where they are,” Scott said. “They could be halfway to the East Coast by now.”

“But we have no reason to think that,” Jean said. “What’s going on?”

Scott stopped pacing. “What?”

“What’s going on?” she repeated. “Why do you want me back in New York?”

“I told you, you don’t need to stay,” Scott said. “I can handle whatever needs to be done here, and you can go tell the others what’s happened so you can-”

“I’m not buying that,” Jean said. “Are you trying to send me away because I don’t trust Madelyne? Well, I don’t want you doing this on your own if you refuse to consider that she’s involved. I figure if we do this together we’re bringing a more balanced team to the fight.”

“No,” Scott said. “I mean, what you said before, about Madelyne…I don’t like it. I don’t believe it. But it makes sense. I can’t believe that of her, but I understand where you’re coming from.” His voice was flat and steady: Cyclops in sunglasses and jeans instead of a visor and spandex.

“Okay,” Jean said slowly. “Then I’m not sure what the problem is. Why are you trying to get rid of me?”

“I’m not-”

“Scott,” she said, “I know what you sound like when you’re deflecting. I know there’s something else going on.” She could see him wavering, hesitating. “Whatever it is that you’re afraid of, we can handle it together.”

“There’s not…” He didn’t even finish the thought.

“I just want to help.” She kept her voice quiet, nonthreatening.

Scott sighed. “All right.” He retrieved a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to her. “All right.”

The paper had been written on; the handwriting was messy and uneven, like it had been written in an unholy rush. _State Home for Foundlings_, and then underneath it, _Sage_.

“That’s the orphanage,” Scott said. He didn’t have to specify which one. “I found the note on Madelyne’s pillow, and that’s her handwriting, but I never told her about the orphanage. Not the name of it, anyway, or where it is.”

“Someone might be trying to lead you into a trap,” Jean said.

“Yeah,” Scott agreed. “But it’s the only lead we have.”

“And you were going to follow it on your own?” Jean asked, incredulous.

Scott shrugged. “You don’t have to come,” he said, completely missing the point.

“No, I’m coming, don’t worry about that,” Jean said. “Let’s find us a flight to Nebraska.”

Scott called his grandparents to let them know he wouldn’t be coming into work for a few days, Jean grabbed her bag from the hotel and closed out her bill, and in no time at all they were on a ten-hour flight to Omaha. Jean dozed on and off while they were in the air, still not comfortable enough to sleep well but tired enough that she couldn’t keep her eyes open for very long. She needed the rest; whatever happened, the next day was going to be a long one. Scott was wide awake next to her every time she drifted - or jolted - back into consciousness, which didn’t surprise her. He was even worse about sleeping on planes than she was, and she couldn’t imagine how he was feeling with his daughter missing. She could only hope he wouldn’t trip up from exhaustion if they found themselves in a tight corner.

Jean insisted on driving when they rented a car in Omaha. “You should try to get some sleep,” she told Scott. “We don’t know what we’re going to be facing.” It was only going to be a two-hour drive, but two hours of sleep was better than nothing.

“I don’t think I can,” Scott said.

“At least close your eyes,” Jean urged him. He didn’t say anything more, and she couldn’t see past the glasses, but she thought the glow behind them dimmed a little as he laid his head back against the headrest.

That left her with nothing to do but think on the long, straight Nebraskan highway. If Rachel had indeed been taken halfway across the continent to the same orphanage her father had grown up in, obviously whoever was behind it knew a lot about Scott. He hadn’t told Madelyne, and Jean couldn’t think of any old enemies who would have that information - even she hadn’t known what town the orphanage was located in. On the other hand, Madelyne had said she wasn’t a mutant, but her word wasn’t trustworthy; maybe she was a telepath after all.

Once she exited off of the highway there was still a good half an hour left to drive; Scott had described Sage as being in the middle of nowhere, and it seemed he wasn’t wrong. At first they were passing farmland, mostly flat with the occasional rolling hill, but soon enough that gave way to open prairie.

“We’re here,” she said once they passed the sign announcing their arrival in Sage, Nebraska, population 312.

Scott, as she’d suspected, was awake, and he sat up at the sound of her voice. “It looks exactly the same,” he murmured. There was a slight catch in his voice.

It looked like a normal enough small town to Jean - old and rusted at the edges, but not particularly foreboding. She wondered what it was that put that edge of fear into Scott’s voice. “I think I could probably find the orphanage in about ten minutes without directions,” she said, “but the less notice we draw to ourselves, the better. We’re not going to want to walk in through the front door.”

“No,” Scott agreed. “But there’s no way to approach it without drawing some attention to ourselves one way or another. If we park in town we can try to circle around and get in through the back, assuming it’s not all locked up.”

“I can take care of any locked doors.”

“…right.” She thought he might have forgotten that she still had her telekinesis. She wasn’t as good as Ororo and her lockpicks, but she could get the job done.

They ended up parking on a side street on the far edge of town, near a dirt road that led out to a building Jean could only vaguely see in the distance. Scott took a moment to dig around in his bag and replace his glasses with a visor.

“It’s only about a fifteen-minute walk,” he said, gesturing up the dirt road.

“All right,” Jean said. “Let’s go find Rachel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to be out of town with no internet until Monday or Tuesday, so the next chapter will be going up Wednesday, October 16th rather than on Saturday.


	6. Chapter 6

The great brick building of the orphanage was surrounded by a ten-foot-tall metal fence that made it look more like a prison than a children’s home. Jean could see a couple of cars in the parking lot but no people; they were lucky it was a school day, as the kids should be in class and hopefully the staff would be taking the time to get some work done rather than patrolling the halls.

If Jean had still been a telepath she could have checked for observers and made them invisible to anyone looking their way, but as it was they had to settle with acting like they were supposed to be there. The gate was open, so the two of them skirted the parking lot and moved around the side of the building to the back, where they found an old steel playground. The ground was mostly dirt, with a few patches of straggly grass and a couple of stunted trees. One of the swings was hanging half off of its frame. All in all, it gave off a sense of neglect and disuse.

“Do you think you could get us up there?” Scott asked, pointing at a window near the roof. “That’s the attic, it should be empty.”

“I think so,” Jean said, “but I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep us both up there and open the lock at the same time.”

“Can you go up by yourself, open the lock, and then bring me up afterwards?”

“I can try.”

Jean hadn’t practiced her telekinesis much since she’d woken up and she expected herself to be rusty, so it was a pleasant surprise when she was able to lift herself up and off the ground quickly and smoothly. She stayed close to the building and away from the windows, though she never saw evidence of people behind any of them; could the whole building be deserted? Or was there something more unpleasant going on, and the whole staff had been taken hostage?

She made it to the window. For a brief moment she thought she saw movement behind it and pushed herself to the side in a panic; if two strangers on the orphanage grounds weren’t enough to raise an alarm, seeing someone floating outside the attic window surely was. But she heard nothing from inside, no footsteps or doors being closed, and after a few heart-pounding moments she cautiously peered into the attic again. All she could see past the window were stacks of boxes, but the attic was dark enough and the stacks tall enough that there were plenty of places for someone to hide. There was nothing for it but to get inside and investigate on her own. The window opened with no protest when she tried it, and she wondered uneasily if it was normal for the attic window to be left unlocked.

She gestured to Scott to let him know she’d be right back and slipped inside, pausing to let her eyes adjust to the dim light inside the attic before starting to creep through the maze of boxes. As far as she could tell the attic was empty, the layer of dust on the floor undisturbed except for where her own feet had passed by, and after making a full sweep of the room and finding no one hiding in the dark corners she was satisfied that they were undiscovered.

Scott was still waiting for her beneath the window when she returned, and she lifted him up and into the attic with significantly less grace than she had used to lift herself. She still managed to not hit him against anything, though, so she considered the exercise a success.

“Everything okay?” he asked once he was safely inside and the window was closed once more.

“Yes,” Jean said. “I thought I saw something but I checked, we’re clear.”

“Good,” Scott said. He turned in a circle, taking in the sight of the attic. “I used to come up here, when I was a kid…” He stopped himself and shook his head. “Sorry. We should keep moving.”

“It’s okay,” Jean said. “It has to be weird, coming back here after all these years.”

“It is. Yes.” Scott shook his head again. “Let’s go.”

He made a beeline for a set of collapsible stairs that let them into the orphanage proper. The hard carpet underfoot and the bare, whitewashed walls felt less homey than even the hotels Jean had been staying in over the past few days. The only wall decorations were lines of identical doors on either side of the hallway, marked only by brass number plates.

“These are bedrooms, mostly,” Scott said. They were keeping their voices soft, and Jean felt strangely like she was in more danger of getting in trouble for disturbing than peace than for trespassing or breaking and entering. “Mine was…” He was staring down the wall, presumably in the direction of his former bedroom. “My roommate’s name was Nate. He was…sort of in charge, or…no, that doesn’t make sense, he was…” He visibly jumped when Jean laid a gentle hand on his arm.

“Do you think Rachel could be up here?” she asked, trying to keep his mind on the present.

“I doubt it,” he said. “I…” He looked back down the hall before shaking himself. “You’re right. Let’s go.”

The hallway was utterly silent and empty as they made their way down it towards the stairwell, and yet Jean caught herself looking back over her shoulder more than once, unable to shake the feeling that they were being watched. She reminded herself that it was a school day and that the reason it was so still and quiet was because the kids were all gone, but nevertheless - shouldn’t there have been the odd toy left out on the floor, paper signs saying KEEP OUT and SARAH’S ROOM on the doors? It felt unused, abandoned. Maybe the top floor was out of use, she justified, and it would look more normal further down.

That made her feel a little better until they made it down to the next floor and she was faced with the same sight. Endless empty walls and no sign that the space was regularly inhabited by people, much less children.

“There are staff rooms at the other end,” Scott said, pointing. “I doubt Rachel will be there either, but it’s more likely than in one of the kids’ rooms.”

The staff wing looked much the same as the rest, although the doors were spaced slightly further apart and some actually had names on them as well as numbers. Presumably the staff were on premises, which made their living area more dangerous, but still they saw no signs of people. It carried the same feeling of abandonment as the floor above. Abandonment, but not neglect like the playground outside; there was no mold on the walls or stains on the carpet, no signs that the building was not in fact brand new and still waiting for its first occupants. It was sterile.

In the muffling silence it would have been easy to hear another person moving around, and especially the sounds of a baby crying, but there was nothing. Jean even looked into some of the rooms and, while at least they looked lived-in from the inside, found no actual people.

The ground floor was where they finally started seeing signs of life, to Jean’s immense and contradictory relief. In fact, she had to drag Scott backwards as he exited the stairwell to avoid being seen by someone passing. She could have sworn the woman looked right at them for a moment, but she continued on her way rather than question the strange adults huddled in the stairwell, so she must have imagined it.

She could still feel eyes following them, observing their every movement. Perhaps they weren’t being accosted because their presence was already known and accepted.

“The infirmary’s that way,” Scott said, pointing down the hall they’d exited into. “I think I remember there being babies in there sometimes. It’s somewhere to start, at least.”

They ran into three more staff members on their way to the infirmary, and eventually it became clear that no one was going to ask them what they were doing there or, indeed, acknowledge their presence at all, even when Jean physically bumped into someone she hadn’t heard coming.

“I assume it wasn’t like this when you were here,” she said, watching the man keep walking without any indication that he’d noticed walking into another human being.

“No,” Scott said. “The staff at least acknowledged us…” He slowed down and paused in front of an open door; coming up behind him, Jean saw what looked a rec room, with tables and chairs scattered about and finally some evidence of children, crayons and puzzles and books. “Oh,” Scott said. “I used to do puzzles in here. One time Nate - no - Lefty stole my glasses, and I had to keep my eyes closed because…no, that didn’t happen, it must have been my headaches…” His voice was heavy with uncertainty. “I didn’t manifest until later…Washington…”

Jean could imagine Scott in this room in a way she hadn’t been able to upstairs, sitting at a table and reading or doing a puzzle. She wondered if she would be able to recognize him at that age; he would’ve looked different, sounded different, been called by a different name, and even his experiences at the time weren’t immediately available for the Scott that stood beside her now, struggling to make sense of his memories. And yet, the imagined child painstakingly putting a puzzle together at one of the tables was still Scott.

She’d shown up, same face, name, and memories, and Scott had backed away from her.

Then again, he’d spent the last year with someone who had her face but was decidedly not her, so clearly her face didn’t mean much. Phoenix had claimed her face _and_ her memories. And now here she was, claiming to be the One True Jean when there was nothing left she could claim as entirely her own.

_A skilled telepath_, she recalled Charles saying once, _could make you believe you were someone else, so thoroughly that even you did not recognize the falsehood._ She shivered.

“Come on,” she said, tugging on Scott’s sleeve. “Let’s take a look at the infirmary.”

Something changed as they approached the infirmary, so subtle that it took Jean longer than it should have to recognize the feeling for what it was. For a single joyous moment she thought that her telepathy had returned, but the lightness in her chest drained away as she realized that she was feeling another mind reaching out to her, not the other way around.

“Do you feel that?” she asked Scott.

“No,” he said, but he sounded dazed.

There was a window in the wall that opened up into what looked like a waiting room, empty but for one adult behind a desk and a little girl sitting in one of the seats and bouncing a ball against the floor. Jean was certain it was the little girl who was reaching out, though she couldn’t have said why. She opened the door and slipped inside.

Neither the woman nor the girl acknowledged her entrance, but when Jean knelt down in front of the girl she looked up, nervous, and clutched her ball to her chest, though she still wasn’t looking at Jean but rather through her. This close to her, Jean could feel her mental touch much more clearly; the girl knew that there was someone there who shouldn’t be, and that feeling of a nearby ghost was drawing up more specific fears, thoughts of a basement and bright lights and needles and _hate the doctor_. Jean drew back from the telepathic contact, startled by the force of the girl’s fear, but thinking that she may have just found an answer. Scott hadn’t mentioned a basement, but the girl’s thoughts were clear.

She stood up, backed away from the girl, and turned to tell Scott what she’d found, only to find herself alone in the infirmary.

“Scott?” she called, turning in a full circle. The woman at the desk ignored her and kept working. Had Scott not followed her in? Maybe he was still outside.

She opened the door and found no sign of Scott to either side. “Scott?” she called again, walking down the hall and turning her head around the corners. Where could he have gone?

No, she knew he wouldn’t wander off without her in the middle of a mission. Maybe he would if he had a really good reason, but she would expect it to be the sort of reason that involved a lot of crashing and shouting. She didn’t know what was going on, but she was ready to find it and put a stop to it, even if that meant taking the orphanage apart brick by brick.

First, though, she had to find the basement.


	7. Chapter 7

It quickly became clear that getting to the basement wasn’t going to be easy. None of the stairwells led to it, and there were no doors helpfully labeled as basement access; for all intents and purposes it seemed that there was nothing below the first floor, but Jean knew that wasn’t right. And if there was a basement then there was a way to get to it.

Jean found an intersection between quiet, deserted hallways close to the center of the building and sat down in the middle of it, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. It had been a long time since she’d tried something like this, and time was of the essence.

Her telekinesis didn’t let her feel the shape of the orphanage, not exactly, but sending mental feelers out through the building that gently disturbed what they passed through told her the basics. Air felt very different from solid matter, and she could use those differences to find walls and rooms.

There were definitely rooms below her. A whole network of them rather than a wide empty space; she was momentarily overwhelmed by the size of it, but she took another deep breath and concentrated. She wasn’t trying to get a map of the basement. All she had to do was find its entrance.

That was easier said than done. She could feel her grip on her telekinesis trembling, and once or twice she lost her hold completely and had to start over. It didn’t help that she had no idea what the entrance actually was; it could be as simple as a staircase where one wouldn’t expect to find a staircase, or it could be something like a trapdoor and ladder. She canvassed the basement piece by piece, trying not to rush, and finally found what felt like a long tunnel of air leading up to the ground floor. Too large for a chimney, and definitely worth checking out.

She stood up too fast and wobbled on her feet, steadying herself with one hand on a nearby wall. Her trick had been quite the exertion, but it felt good, like stretching her legs after sitting down for too long. She moved in the direction of the chute, checking in with her telekinesis now and then to make sure she was headed in the right direction, and finally she made it to an unmarked door, behind which she could feel empty air that stretched down into the earth.

The door was locked, but it didn’t take much effort to force it open, revealing the empty chute she’d been looking for. Cables inside the chute identified it as an elevator shaft, and peering over the edge revealed nothing but darkness. There weren’t any buttons, so even if she’d been in the mood to take an elevator ride she wouldn’t have known how to call the car, but all she had to do was step out into the air and lower herself down.

She landed on her feet on top of the elevator car, and it was quick work to force the top hatch and then the main doors open - loud, but quick - and step out into a sort of antechamber. She had to assume that her presence was already known; noise wouldn’t make a difference, but dallying could. She’d lost track of time while searching for the basement and wasn’t sure how long it had been since Scott had disappeared. She could only hope that he and Rachel were still alive.

The antechamber was lit with bright white lights that reflected harshly off of the bare walls. There was a desk in front of her that was layered with dust, an open hallway to her left, and a couple of doors to her right. She tried the doors, carefully easing them open to peek around their edges; both of them were storage closets, full of boxes reminiscent of what she’d seen in the attic.

The hallway to the left was short, and quickly made a right turn before opening up into a long, open space. There was a gurney pushed off to one side, conspicuously free of dust and with a couple of boxes piled on top of it whose labels announced that they had once held scalpel blades. There was only one door, a few feet away from the gurney.

She stopped in front of the door before opening it, pressed her ear against it, and heard nothing. She carefully eased the door open and stepped inside.

She found herself in some sort of lab. Tables were scattered throughout the room in a haphazard maze, covered in trays and papers and instruments. There were unused microscope slides, screwdrivers, test tube racks, scissors, filing cabinets, and Jean found herself moving further into the room without making a conscious decision to do so, trying to determine what purpose could have united everything there.

Whatever she had been expecting to find in the basement, it certainly hadn’t been this. An overenthusiastic in-house doctor was one thing, but this was something else entirely. And the way it had been kept so secret left her in no doubt as to the sorts of things that happened down there. Her throat tightened and she tried to control her breathing, falling back on old training to keep her calm. Don’t let the situation get to you. Do what must be done.

Coming to the far end of the room, she found herself in an emptier space centered around an operating table, complete with adjustable restraints. Jean stopped at the edge of the empty space, chilled to the bone, suddenly wondering if it wouldn’t be better for her to turn around and go back and get the others - but she’d come this far. She stepped forward, into the empty space, circling the operating table. The area was perfectly clean, perfectly neat, and yet she still imagined she could smell blood and see it staining the floor. She felt drawn to the table but stayed a few feet away from it in fear that if she got any closer it would catch her, reel her in, and she wouldn’t be able to escape.

She was beginning to remember that she was there for a reason and had to extract herself from this fascination and keep looking when a voice said, “How lovely to see you again, Miss Grey.”

Jean’s head snapped up to find three people facing her across the table where there had been none before. The man in the middle was preternaturally pale with slicked-back dark hair, dressed in an old-fashioned black suit with a dark red tie. A red stone glittered on one of his fingers. It was the two people on either side of him that drew Jean’s attention, though: to his right stood a woman who might have been unrecognizable with her hair rolled up near her ears and her skirt about twice as wide as her shoulders if not for the fact that she still had Jean’s face. Jean wasn’t at all surprised to find Madelyne there, but part of her was still regretful.

On the man’s other side stood Scott. He looked more normal, still dressed in the same clothing he’d had on when Jean had last seen him, but there was something off. His ramrod straight posture wasn’t unusual, but he was still, his arms hanging at his sides and his hands and fingers limp and motionless, not tapping or balled into fists or flexing. The only sign that he was even alive was the movement of his chest as he breathed. Jean couldn’t check, but it looked very much like telepathic control; she wondered if it was Madelyne or the man in the middle who was responsible.

“I had hoped that Scott would convince you to return to New York as instructed, but I think this is going to turn out just splendidly,” the man said with a placid smile. “Sometimes accidents of fate produce more impressive results than even my machinations.”

“Who are you?” Jean asked. She spoke to make it look like she was focusing on the people in front of her and not her surroundings, making mental notes of what could serve as effective weapons. “What have you done to Scott, where’s Rachel?”

“Always so inquisitive,” the man mused. His smile had developed a sharp edge. “You may address me as Dr. Essex. As for Scott and his daughter, I think you’ll find that’s very little concern of yours.”

The table between them could serve as a blunt-force weapon, though she thought it might be more useful where it was as a barrier. More difficult to handle were the scalpels set up in a neat row on a table to the right of the group. And there was plenty of glass around, as well as large, heavy instruments. The hardest part would be keeping Scott out of the line of fire.

There was one last question she had to ask. “Madelyne,” she said, allowing herself the briefest of glances towards the other woman, who was staring straight ahead, unnervingly still. “Is she real?”

“As real as you are,” Essex said smoothly, and it felt like a punch to the gut.

_I’m real!_ Jean wanted to say. _I’m real, I know I’m real, I was here first!_

She remembered Scott’s words from just two days ago, sitting in Madelyne’s living room with Rachel on his lap: _she was real._ This wasn’t a zero-sum game. Phoenix, Madelyne, and Jean, three distinct entities, all real in one way or another, even if Jean couldn’t hope to understand what Phoenix had been and didn’t know exactly who Madelyne was.

Jean straightened her back and focused. Just as she was about to _pull_ and wrench a large piece of equipment off of its table and send it crashing down onto Essex, something lanced quick and sharp and painful into her mind. She was driven to her knees, gasping in pain, but she pushed back at the presence in her mind nevertheless. She wrestled with the invader and pinned it down with a heroic effort, only to find herself awash in numbness; she had a moment to realize that the sensation wasn’t originating with her before she was thrown off and found herself alone in her own mind, on the floor, her breath coming in sharp gasps.

Essex tsked and said, “Now, now, Jean, let’s have none of that, I don’t want you damaged. I do wish I could properly test my own improvements against you, but I hear you’re no longer a telepath - such a shame.”

Jean rose unsteadily to her feet. If she could disrupt Madelyne - she was sure that was who had attacked her - and take her out of the fight, she might have a chance on her own. She tried to grab Madelyne with her telekinesis, planning to send her to the ground, but even in the instant she formed the thought Essex said, “I told you not to try that, Jean,” and this time it was Scott who collapsed to the ground with a cry, clutching his head.

“Quite frankly I don’t need the two of you alive anymore,” Essex said, “and I would keep that in mind if I were you. It would be a terrible waste to kill either of you, of course, but if you’re going to be unreasonable…”

Unreasonable. Jean could have laughed. She was stuck, though, not sure what she could do if all of her plans were going to be plucked from her mind before she could put them into motion.

_Sorry about that._

It took all of Jean’s training to stop her from startling at the sudden voice in her head. _Madelyne?_

_No time. I'm shackled, but if I lend you my strength, can you take him down?_

Scott was now silent, but he was still curled up on the floor, and Essex was talking about…something. Jean had stopped paying attention. _I can try._

_He’s strongly shielded but he’s distracted. If you hit him hard enough you might buy us some time._

Jean didn’t trust Madelyne, didn’t want to trust Madelyne, but she had little choice.

_Ready?_ Madelyne asked. _You’ll need to be quick._

_Yes._ And suddenly an unnameable _something_ was flooding through her and she felt full in a way she’d forgotten telepathy could feel. She wanted to linger in it, to savor it, to marvel at how good it felt to be whole again, but she knew she had only moments with which to get this done. She lashed out at Essex’s mind as hard as she could, not bothering to try and be precise about it, just a brute-force attack that she hoped would be enough to bring him down.

It wasn’t.

She made contact like a hammer hitting a blanket, causing no damage but making the cloth flutter and twist. Essex stumbled, surprised, and Madelyne collapsed to the floor, withdrawing from Jean’s mind.

“Disappointing,” Essex said. All signs of a smile had vanished from his face. “Very disappointing. The fault is mostly my own, of course; what else is to be expected from shoddy workmanship?” He frowned down at Madelyne where she lay unmoving and sighed. “Oh, well. Mistakes beget progress. Jean,” and he turned back towards her, prowling forward, “I think it’s time we cut this social call short.”

He didn’t seem to be aware of what Jean was seeing: Scott climbing slowly to his feet behind Essex, shaky but grimly determined. Jean had to keep Essex distracted for long enough to let Scott regain his bearings.

She did so by grabbing the floor beneath his feet and tearing at it, ripping off pieces of the tile and setting him off-balance before sending the pieces of broken tile back at him as projectiles. Essex laughed as they hit, and when he picked a piece out of his cheek Jean saw to her horror that his skin immediately closed around the wound, leaving just a speck of blood on his pale cheek. She shoved the operating table towards him and he deflected it with a wave of his hand - also a telekinetic, then.

“Jean,” he started to say, but he was cut off as a brilliant beam of red light hit him full in the middle, sending him flying across the room and into a table with a crash and the tinkle of broken glass.

The room held its breath, waiting to see what would happen, but Essex remained where he’d fallen. Scott slowly lowered his hand from his visor.

“I’ll check him,” Jean said, already moving cautiously towards the prone form.

“He’s dead,” Madelyne said from where she was using a nearby table to pull herself to her feet. She started pulling at her dress with her bare hands, ignoring the buttons in favor of ripping through the material, and Jean continued on her way. She wanted to see for herself.

Essex had been nearly cut in half, clean through, which was odd; Scott’s eyebeams should have crushed him rather than slicing through him. But there was blood everywhere (along with other viscera Jean tried not to look at too closely) and he was definitely not breathing, with no sign that his body was going to knit itself back together. Jean shivered and turned her back on the mess. That was one sight she’d be happy to forget.

By that time Madelyne’s dress lay in a pool at her feet and she was struggling with her corset, which Jean could see was not going to yield to her. “Here,” Jean said, picking up a pair of scissors and approaching. “Let me help with that.”

Madelyne’s eyes were wary, but she nodded and let Jean close enough to cut through the laces at the back of the corset so she could fling it off, leaving her in a plain white chemise. Scott approached from her other side.

“Where’s Rachel?” he asked, his voice and urgent.

“She’s in one of the storage rooms.” Madelyne looked like she was feeling the same bone-deep weariness as Jean, but it was going to be some time yet before they could rest. “Come on, I can show you.”

Madelyne led them out of the lab and through a labyrinth of corridors until they reached a room full of strange white human-sized pods that had masses of cabling trailing out from them and into screens mounted on nearby walls. Madelyne led them to the far side of the room, where the pods became smaller and one of them was lit up and humming, an infant-sized silhouette barely visible within.

“_Rachel_,” Scott said, and then he was pushing by and trying to pry the tank open, hands shaking as he scrabbled for purchase on the smooth surface.

“Let me,” Jean said, stepping forward to lay her hands on the tank. She wiggled her telekinesis into the seam between the lid and the rest of the tank and pulled it off, telling it slide away and fall to the floor with a resounding crash. Scott was already taking Rachel out, cradling her in his arms, his face awash with relief. Rachel squirmed, opened her eyes, and started to cry.

Jean didn’t have time to start worrying about someone hearing before Rachel stopped crying and, apparently, decided it was time for a nap.

“What?” Scott said, bewildered.

“She’s fine,” Madelyne said. “She’s tired and hungry, that’s all, but we can’t do much about the latter problem right now. We need to get out of here.”

“Right,” Scott said, looking down at Rachel in his arms.

“What about the staff?” Jean asked. “Will they try to stop us now?”

“Honestly, I have no idea,” Madelyne said as she led them back through the labyrinth towards the elevator. “But I can make sure no one notices us on our way out.”

Getting out of the orphanage proved to be easy. Madelyne was true to her word, and they walked right out the front door without anyone noticing them, the few staff members they encountered ignoring them as surely as they had before. Nothing seemed to have changed.

Jean found herself driving again once they made it down the dirt road and to the car. None of them spoke as Jean drove them through Sage and back to the highway. It had been a long, exhausting day, the sun now hanging low on the horizon, but all she wanted to do was get as far away from the orphanage as she could manage. Everything else could wait.


	8. Chapter 8

The atmosphere inside the car was tense and silent. Scott was in the back seat, Rachel still sleeping in his arms, while next to Jean Madelyne had her head leaned against the window, her face hidden from view. Jean doubted she was sleeping.

Jean herself was staring straight ahead, focusing all of her concentration on the road in front of her. She knew that if she gave in to the worries and questions boiling under the surface that they would consume her, and she couldn’t let that happen while she was the one responsible for getting them all somewhere safe. So she stared at the road and gripped the steering wheel until she wasn’t sure she’d be able to let it go and she drove.

It was a welcome relief when Rachel started wailing after they’d been on the road for scarcely an hour. It meant something else to think about, something normal to focus on. A problem that could be solved.

Madelyne stirred, but didn’t lift her head.

“Is she hungry?” Jean asked, finding Scott in the rearview mirror.

“Probably,” Scott said. “I think what woke her up is needing her diaper changed, though.” He paused before adding, “I don’t think I packed anything for her.”

Jean couldn’t blame him; those last few hours in Anchorage had been a flurry of action and anxiety. “We can find somewhere to pull over.” Which was perhaps easier said than done, as they were passing through a lot of towns that weren’t much more than a church and a bar and a cemetery, but eventually they found a 24-hour convenience store. Everyone got out of the car without prompting and stumbled into the brightly-lit store.

Jean hung back with Madelyne as Scott ducked into the bathroom with Rachel and a fresh diaper, the plastic bag with their purchases resting at her feet. She wondered what the handful of other patrons thought of them; identical twins, she supposed, though what they made of Madelyne in her chemise she didn’t know. Jean was sure they wouldn’t have gotten away without Madelyne’s help, but not knowing exactly what was going on and what Madelyne’s role in the whole thing was worried her.

“It’s understandable,” Madelyne said, the first words she’d spoken out loud since they’d left the orphanage.

“What is?” Jean asked, but before Madelyne could respond the door to the bathroom opened and Scott exited, clutching a still-upset Rachel and an unused diaper.

“There’s no changing station,” he said.

Madelyne made a move as if to take Rachel from him but caught herself and stopped, moving back a step and averting her eyes.

“I’ll take care of it,” Jean said, stepping forward to take Rachel instead.

Scott nodded, passing over his daughter and the diaper, and it didn’t occur to Jean to be worried about leaving him alone with Madelyne until the bathroom door had swung shut behind her. She resolved to be quick.

Rachel quieted once Jean started cleaning her up, gazing up at her with wide, dark eyes. Brown eyes, not blue like Jean’s. Scott had told her once that his eyes were brown, but of course she’d never had the chance to see for herself. Her skin was darker than Jean’s, too, and just a little lighter than Scott’s. Scott had said they hadn’t bothered with a paternity test, but Jean wondered if the results were really in doubt.

Jean hoisted Rachel back up into her arms once she was done, and Rachel responded by smiling at her and babbling. “I’m not your mom, sorry,” Jean said, hoping that wasn’t what Rachel saw when she looked at her. “Maybe…maybe one day I will be. But I don’t know where your dad and I are going from here.” If anything, Rachel probably associated her face more with Madelyne than with Phoenix, but Jean wasn’t sure that was a comfort.

“Come on,” Jean said, adjusting her grip on Rachel so she could open the door, “let’s go see your dad.”

She had the distinct impression that Scott and Madelyne stopped talking when she left the bathroom and she graciously pretended not to notice, handing Rachel back to Scott without a word. Hopefully she’d sleep more in the car; she could probably use it.

Jean kept Scott back with a gentle touch on his arm as Madelyne slid into the car. “Are you all right?” she asked softly.

Scott shrugged. The movement was slow, listless. “As much as I ever am.”

That wasn’t the most reassuring of responses. “I know now’s not a good time,” she said, “but later, when the dust has settled, we can talk about it. Okay?”

Scott nodded and looked away from her, towards the car. “I know you don’t trust her,” he said. Madelyne was sitting in the passenger seat, her gaze straight ahead, but Jean knew that didn’t mean she wasn’t listening in.

“I’m…reevaluating,” she hedged.

“It’s okay,” Scott said. “I just wanted to say…we did grow up together. I forgot, or I wasn’t allowed to remember, but she was there with me, in the orphanage. It’s…” His breath hitched, and Jean moved closer to him, just barely not touching. “Sorry,” he said.

“Later, right?”

“Right,” Scott said. “But she wasn’t lying. That’s all I wanted to say.”

Jean nodded. She didn’t know what exactly to say to that, so she gestured back at the car and said, “We should get back on the road.”

Once they were all back in the car, Jean twisted around in her seat and said, “What’s the plan from here on out? Where are we going?” The sun was kissing the horizon, and she was sure they could all use some sleep.

Scott looked like he was about to say something, but before he managed it Madelyne said, “Not back to Anchorage.”

“Hang on,” Scott protested, “I only said I’d be gone for a couple of days. I don’t know how many more I can take off on such short notice.”

“You really want to go back there?” Madelyne asked. “He’s been watching you since you first set foot in Alaska.” She cut herself off with a sharp intake of breath, and for a heart-pounding moment Jean thought she was going to alert them to some new threat, but all she said was, “I forgot he’s dead.”

“He’s dead,” Scott repeated, his voice soft.

“Why don’t we get a room for the night and figure it out then?” Jean asked. “Or tomorrow morning, after we’ve gotten some sleep.”

Madelyne shrugged and turned back to the window, which Jean took as agreement. Scott said, “It’s probably not a good idea to bring Rachel on a plane right now anyway.”

“Keep an eye out for vacancy signs,” Jean said.

They ended up stopping just barely outside of Omaha - they’d passed a couple of other places with vacancies along the way, but Scott had wanted to get closer to the city. With the card Warren gave her they could’ve stayed in the Ritz, but Jean was more worried about sleep than whether or not they could order room service.

There were other things to take care of, though.

Scott called his grandparents while Jean tried to feed Rachel with one of the little jars of baby food they’d picked up at the convenience store. Madelyne hovered in the corner of the room, her arms crossed over her chest, staring at nothing.

“With the job and everything,” Scott was saving into the phone. Jean wasn’t exactly trying to listen in, but it was hard to avoid in such close quarters. “…all right.” Scott’s voice had gone flat, though whether that was from exhaustion or emotion Jean wasn’t sure. Maybe both. “Of course. I will. Thank you.”

“Scott?” Jean asked once he’d hung up. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t look away from the phone. “Apparently Madelyne and I quit.”

“What?”

“I expected as much,” Madelyne said quietly from across the room. Her gaze was still vacant, but her voice was clear. “Disappearances are easier to orchestrate if no one thinks anyone’s disappeared. It’s less alarming for someone to quit their job and move away than it is for them to vanish off the face of the earth.”

Scott frowned and dialed another number - his apartment complex, by the sound of it. The look on his face after the call had ended told her everything she needed to know.

“How can he do so much?” she asked the room at large.

Madelyne answered. “He gets control of important people, inserts himself into necessary positions. He ingrains himself into the fabric of who people are and who things are run. I was just one of his playing pieces in Anchorage, he had plenty more.”

Scott had lifted his head to listen while she spoke, but Jean imagined she would see the same blank look in his eyes that she was seeing in Madelyne’s. “Scott?” she said, and when he didn’t respond, “Scott? Are you okay?”

He turned his head in her direction and said, “Yeah,” a beat too late for it to be convincing. “I’m…I should start getting Rachel ready for bed.”

Jean let him get away with it. There would be time to face reality later; for now all she had to do was brush her teeth and go to bed.

The sound of the door opened interrupted her bedtime plans before she’d even had a chance to start, and she looked up to find Madelyne slipping out of the room. Jean stood up and followed.

She found Madelyne standing just outside the door, ghostly in her chemise, her gaze trained on the night sky. “I know you have questions,” Madelyne said. “Might as well get started on that.”

Jean had a million things to ask, but the one that made it out of her mouth was, “Can we trust you?”

Madelyne shrugged. “Sure.”

“I mean it,” Jean said. “I don’t know who you are or what you want but I’m sick and tired of second-guessing you. I may not be a telepath anymore, but I’m not helpless and I will defend those two with my life. So. If you’ve got anything up your sleeve we might as well have it out right now.”

Madelyne blew out a foggy breath. “I don’t know who I am or what I want, either,” she said. “But I do know that I don’t want to hurt any of you, so you can stop worrying about that.”

Jean wasn’t going to stop worrying, and she assumed Madelyne knew that, but that would come with time. For now… “What happened? Why did you take Rachel?”

“It wasn’t my idea,” Madelyne said. “I was in Anchorage to keep an eye on the Summers family and to distract Scott, to keep him there. Once you showed up, we couldn’t wait any longer…” She screwed up her face in frustration. “It’s distant. Or there’s a wall. I have the memories but I can’t quite get to them.” She shook her head. “When someone like that has you at his mercy for so long…he wove himself into our minds, our basic consciousnesses. That’s hard to shake off, even when he’s dead.”

“He had access to Scott through the orphanage,” Jean said slowly.

“I don’t know the details of your connection to him, sorry,” Madelyne said. “Obviously he had your DNA,” and she gestured to herself.

Until that moment, Jean hadn’t put a lot of thought into where Madelyne had come from, or at least she hadn’t since meeting Essex. She thought back to the secret basement, the lab, the scalpels…the surgical scars on Scott’s torso that he refused to talk about. He’d grown up there, with a man who was capable of human cloning, a man who had a torture chamber set up in the basement, a man who, somehow, had acquired her own DNA.

She shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself.

“I don’t entirely trust myself, if that makes you feel better,” Madelyne was saying. “I don’t know…” She trailed off, and she sounded so lost that Jean made an impulse decision.

“Come back to New York with us.”

Madelyne turned to look directly at her for the first time that evening. “If Scott decides he’s going back to Anchorage, are you going to go with him?”

Jean hesitated. There wasn’t much for her in Anchorage besides Scott, and there were some big conversations they’d need to have before making that decision. Then again, there wasn’t much for her in New York, either. Warren and Bobby and Hank, yes; parents and a sister she still hadn’t contacted. (‘Surprise, I’m back! I hope you missed me!’) But she didn’t have any more of a life there than she did in Anchorage, not anymore.

“Maybe,” she said.

Madelyne nodded. “I’ll come to New York with you, if you’re offering. But I’m not going back to Anchorage.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Jean said.

“Maybe,” Madelyne said, and smiled wryly at her.

Jean found herself smiling back. “Oh,” she said, suddenly remembering something, “do you want to change out of that? I only brought one pair of PJs, but I have a t-shirt and sweatpants you can borrow.”

Madelyne looked down at her chemise, as if surprised to find she was still wearing it. “Sweatpants sound good,” she said. “I hate this thing.”

Jean laughed even though there wasn’t anything funny about the situation, and after a moment Madelyne joined her. Their laughter didn’t sound all that much alike. “Come on,” Jean said, “we shouldn’t have much trouble finding something that fits you,” and she led Madelyne back into the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And done! The sequel is already plotted and I'm working on the rough draft; it took me almost 11 months to get this fic plotted and written and edited and NaNo is coming up so I don't know how long the wait will be, but it's coming.
> 
> In the meantime, I'd like to post some oneshots/ficlets set in this universe. I already have a couple of ideas, but if anyone wants to request something set before/during Lifesigns, let me know! I can't guarantee it'll get written (or that it'll get written in a timely manner), but I'll put it on my list!
> 
> [wellnoe](https://wellnoe.tumblr.com/) drew some incredible art of Jean, Madelyne, and Scott driving away from the orphanage; [go check it out](https://ndscottsummers.tumblr.com/post/188707466931/i-tried-to-draw-the-folks-on-their-way-away-from)!

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to come say hi on [Tumblr](ndscottsummers.tumblr.com)!


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